Killone Convent
The Site
The situation of the convent is extremely
picturesque, lying on the hillside at the northern end of a lake. This
water is itself a centre of curious folk-lore: it was, legends say, the
abode of a mermaid, who, in the O’Briens’ time, used to swim
up a brook and steal wine in the cellars of Newhall. Better for her had
she kept to her own element, for the butler lay in wait and stabbed her;
her blood stained all the lake, and as she floated away faint and weak,
she prophesied that in like manner would the O’Briens pass away
from Newhall. The lake still becomes a rusty red, from iron mud in the
shale; this happens at long intervals, usually after a dry summer, and
is believed to forebode a change of occupants to the neighbouring house.
It last happened (it is said) when the present owner leased the place
to one of the O’Briens.
Few more delightful walks can be imagined than that through the neighbouring
demesne of Edenvale to Killone. Through a deep and narrow valley, richly
wooded with every variety of tree, the haunt of rooks herons. We pass
the house of Edenvale on its bold and ivied cliff, and the picturesque
little cemetery in the glen. The path runs beside a lake abounding in
wild fowl, and fringed with the bulrush, iris, and flowering rush, past
the picturesque old garden, with mellow brick walls and two lofty terraces,
with long flights of steps reflected among the water lilies. We pass the
foundations of the castle and bawn of Killone on its abrupt rock, and
the old brick house of Newhall, and stand on the grassy ridge looking
down on the roofless convent.
The ridge is for the most part thickly wooded. Down its farther slope
falls a little stream over a shelf of rock amidst tufted ferns, losing
itself in the reeds. At the eastern end, the river out of Killone Lake,
banked on the farther shore by walls of rock capped with great boulders,
flows through tangled masses of reeds and water-lilies towards Ballybeg
Lake. Some tall and venerable trees in the graveyard make a vista with
those on the hill; through its opening can be seen Clare Abbey, which
the monotonously common legend asserts to be connected with Killone by
an underground passage, two miles long. The woods of Dromoland, the island-studded
estuary of the Fergus, the towers of Quin Abbey, Danganbrack, Moghane,
Cleenagh Urlane, and Canons Island are plainly visible. The hill of Moghane
girt with its prehistoric ring-walls, rises to the south, the wooded hills
of Paradise and Cragbrien appear on the western side of the estuary, and
to the east the landscape is bounded by the blue and brown Slieve Bernagh,
and the more distant mountains beyond the plains of Limerick, on the borders
of Cork and Waterford. The convent lies on the slope, and from the steep
fall of the ground is very irregular, both as to its levels and plan,
the latter being much off the square. The churchyard is shockingly overgrown
and overcrowded, riddled with the burrows of rats and rabbits, and despite
of its being the place of burial of several county families—those
of Darcy, Daxon, England, Lucas, Macdonnell, and Stacpoole—has no
pleasing feature except the fine row of dark and lofty Florence-court
yews along the eastern face of the church.
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